Throughout history, torturers have always had excuses for their torture. Torquemada was defending the Church from heretics. Vlad the Impaler was ridding his country of undesirable elements. Hitler was protecting whites from the scourge of non-Aryan mongrel races.

In the late 20th century, though, one excuse has stood out. South African police used it when they defended putting burning tires around the necks of black prisoners. Pinochet used it to defend the practice of his secret police when they attached wires to the testicals of prisoners and ran an electric charge through them (a little trick they learned from us in The School for the Americas). Papa Doc Duvalier used it when his Ton Ton Macoute skinned people alive. In our own day, Uzbekistan's President Karimov--one of the Emperor's 'allies' in the WOT--used it to excuse boiling people alive. See if you recognize it.

"Intelligence gathered from these interrogations has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives...."

Berlin -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised European leaders Monday, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects had produced information that helped "save European lives."

Her remarks were the Bush administration's official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers in at least eight European nations, said to house dozens of terror suspects.

At the same time, she denied that the United Stated has moved suspects to these prisons to allow interrogators to use torture. "The United States," she said, "does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances." At another point, she said, "The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."

Intelligence gathered from these interrogations, she said, "has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe as well as the United States." But she declined to offer examples or provide any specific information to support her assertions. She said any information related to the prisons was classified.

• ...interrogations of these suspects had produced information that helped "save European lives." : Clinton's counter-terrorism team stopped both the Millenium Bomb plot and the WTC plot without resorting to torture. So far as we know, NO plot against America OR Europe has been stopped as the result of information obtained under torture. NOT ONE.



• ...interrogations of these suspects ha[s] produced information...: Um, actually? No, it hasn't. Even the military admits that nothing of strategic value has come out of any of the hundreds of interrogations they've conducted in the past three years, not in Gitmo or anywhere else. One unnamed officer was even quoted saying that the interrogations weren't meant to elicit information but to intimidate a population that was, in the military's view, too friendly with the insurgents.



• "The United States," she said, "does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances.": This is the 'When Other Govts Do It, It's Torture--When We Do It It Isn't' Defense (discussed here), wherein we simply get our malleable and obliging Atty Gen, Alberto Gonzales, to define any torture in which we indulge as 'legal'. Torture is illegal, you see, so if it's legal, it isn't 'torture'. Got that?



• "The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture.": A blatant lie. For one, US agents kidnapped Mahar Arar in Canada and shipped him off to Saudi Arabia where he was beaten and tortured. He was later released because 'he knew nothing'. In other words, he was innocent.